A beast Worth Fighting.

Marcus braced himself, weapon at the ready. Certainly the beast’s display was an effective show of power, but the nature of the game filled Marcus with confidence. This was a tutorial boss plain and simple. He could show off all he liked, but this encounter was obviously designed to do little more than give the player an idea of how a more advanced foe could fight. Still, he was ready and eager to go. The area around them was spacious aside from a few cargo containers, but nothing that would hinder Marcus’s movement. The remaining guards meanwhile readied their weapons, preparing to try their hand at the foe as well.

The beast wasted no more time. Its spear hand drew back before extending out with a vicious thrust. As Marcus had figured, the attack was slow, giving plenty of time for his novice self to hop left of the attack. Not only that, the beast overextended by far, giving Marcus time to wind back his maul and bludgeon the creature's center mass. Unfortunately, this big fella wasn’t like his meager kin and he simply took the blow with an impressive sturdiness. Marcus of course hadn’t expected the creature to flinch. He was still weak for sure, but not that weak. What he didn’t account for was the lack of his weapon’s follow through. Unlike its flimsier cohorts, the body of the boss was enough to stop the weapon in its tracks, misaligning Marcus’s hands as he acted out a full swing, causing the weapon to slip from his left hand.

“Dammit dummy, stop doing that!” He growled, chastising himself as he backed away and took a moment to regain full grip of his weapon.

Distracted as he was however, he was not ready for the sahuagin to follow up its thrust with a violent swipe of its clawed left hand, sending Ember careening back at an angle. The imp crashed to the ground with a thud before quickly rising back up. The resulting damage was much more significant than that of the minions before it, but at three quarters of his hit points remaining, Marcus remained unconcerned. Instead, he readied his weapon for the next incoming attack which the sahuagin quickly delivered with a wide upward swing of the harpoon. Fortunately, Marcus could see this one ahead of time and deflected it with his weapon, observing as the creature overextended its attack once more. With its right flank now exposed, Marcus dashed in, winding his maul back towards his right as he angled himself towards the creature’s flank. Then, as soon as he closed in, he used his momentum to deliver a crushing blow to the monster’s exposed side.

Feeling good about himself, he watched as the chieftain leaped back, putting some distance between them. Marcus’s eyes then wandered up to the boss’s hit points. Though he had only landed a couple of strikes, about an eighth of its maximum health had been chipped away, which was some decent progress as far as he was concerned. Focusing on its hit points however, Marcus was once again paying insufficient attention as the chieftain opened its mouth. For a moment, Marcus figured this was going to be a bite attack, but was taken completely off guard when instead, a bolt of water shot from its mouth and collided with the body of his avatar, once more sending him soaring back across the deck. Marcus gritted his teeth in frustration of himself before looking at his hit points. Yep, they were nearly at half! It was pretty clear that this creature could deal more damage to him per hit than he could to it, but He still remained unconcerned as his avatar rose back up to continue the fight.

So, this beast was capable of more than just flailing their weapon about. It was then that Marcus returned his attention to his active abilities, Fire Spit and Rage. If this creature wanted to engage him at range so bad, then he would just follow suit. Pressing the button on his controller to activate the power, he watched as Ember’s cheeks puffed up enough to enter his vision. After that, he simply stared, awkwardly for a couple of moments as nothing happened before it suddenly occurred to him to remove his finger from the button. After that, his ears were met with a rather forceful spitting sound which released what looked to be a sizable sphere of something ablaze from Ember’s mouth. It arced slowly through the air before splattering against the body of the boss. The moment it struck, the beast let out a cry of agony as it had suddenly been lit ablaze and the icon of a flame appeared beneath the boss’s health bar with a number on it that started ticking down from six. The large fish man flinched for a moment as they were suddenly engulfed in flame, but quickly returned to their combat stance as if they weren’t currently on fire. Their health had also begun ticking down bit by bit every few seconds on top of an initial blast of damage that occurred upon the landing of the initial attack. Marcus was a little surprised to see that his fire spit attack wasn’t just a name. It was literally a glob of flammable saliva that covered and ignited targets. He checked the ability again, not surprised to see that it had a short cooldown period associated with it, forcing him to wait before it could be used again.

As a white line descended upon a now grey icon, restoring its color as it went, he set his sights to his other ability, Rage. The activation of this ability would need to be put on hold however as the beast reared its harpoon back and lept into the air towards Marcus. He knew full well what was happening but once more had been too distracted to properly avoid it. Though he managed to avoid a direct strike as the spear came down and pierced the deck, he had still been close enough to receive residual damage from the landing impact, forcing ember to stumble and take another small hit to his health.

“Yo, ya mind!? Try’n to figure out my buttons here!” Marcus shouted before backing away from his foe who’s malicious gaze followed him.

Fortunately, Marcus had been in for a bit of luck as the NPC guardsmen had finally decided to step in. He wasn’t sure if that was because his hit points were below half right now or if they were just slow to get involved, but their distraction gave him an opportunity to activate Rage. Pressing the button, he found himself very happy for the extra few seconds the guards bought him by being smacked silly across the deck as his character went motionless for a moment. Raising their hands in front of them independently of Marcus’s own and clenching them into, Marcus was then met with the most unintimidating roar he had ever heard in his life emanating from the mouth of Ember himself. It was on par for a mischievous little scamp like the one he had made, but hardly seemed fitting for a fierce warrior, just as Marcus intended. The moment his character let out his chuckle inducing war cry, another small, magenta colored bar appeared above his health bar. Beside it was the icon of the Rage ability and the end of the bar sparked like a lit fuse as it slowly reduced towards the image on the left. Marcus was able to surmise what this likely implied and quickly hurried towards the sahuagin. The beast was no longer ablaze and instead, was beating down on the guardsmen around it. Not eager to waste his chance, he reared up his maul, ran forward, and sent it crashing into the back of the boss, weapon flashing as it delivered a critical hit. Between the fire, NPCs, and critical hit, the boss’s hit points had now dropped to almost half.

Meanwhile, all around, the guards seemed to be cheering Marcus on, clearly recognizing the superiority of his player character power level over their own. Somehow, it actually made Marcus feel good, and apparently Ember as well as a Rally buff appeared over his health bar. At the moment however, he was simply too focused on the boss to pay attention to the actual benefits he was being granted, but then again, he had little more than assumptions to go on when it came to his Rage ability as well. It was something he would need to investigate later. For now, it was time to thrash this boss some more! At least, it would have had a sudden swipe from the beast’s bulky tail not clobbered the poor Imp once again. If Ember had a mind of his own, he would probably have been begging for another player to control him at this point. Regardless, he was sent tumbling once again, his hit points now sitting at roughly a third of their maximum. Somewhat shameful as it was, Marcus at least saw this as an opportunity to try out one of the healing potions he started with. Reaching back, he was happy to see the backpack appear in his hand. Setting his maul on the ground, Marcus hovered his hand over the bag to open the inventory. Inside were his supplies with his potions right on top. Quickly he grabbed one of those small glass vials before returning his backpack to his back and popping the cork off of the bottle. Using his free hand to take hold of his weapon once more, he tipped the vial where his mouth would be and watched as the red liquid drained out, filling his hit points back to their maximum value.

As he finished up his potion, the Chieftain was already upon him, rearing back for another thrust, but Marcus was already on the move. Securing his weapon in both hands, he charged up and launched another viscous fire spit, once more burning his target. Marcus then approached for another swing, stealing a glance at the boss’s health bar as it seemed to tick down noticeably more from the burning than it had the first time. No doubt this was thanks to one of the buffs he was currently enjoying. It was when his maul struck the beast with another resounding crack that he also noticed the magenta bar that represented his rage jump back up ever so slightly as he made contact with his foe. Come to think of it, it didn’t look quite as low as he would have expected it to be by now given its rate of drain. Well, it was pretty clear now as to why that was.